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Susan Pevensie
Do you want to know, know that it doesn't hurt me? "That cat is the one who stopped believing in me first." She's headstrong, intelligent, stubborn and practical. Susan is very much a realist and a sometime cynic. The here and now is what is real and that may change at any time, don't count on the future holding what you think it will--Susan doesn't. Her sense of humor is rather wry (Phyllis is her preferred nom de plume when being mischievous ) and sometimes sarcastic but not harshly so, not where amusement is concerned. She saves that sort of bitter retort for when she’s angry and railing against what she perceives as the wrongs committed against her. Susan mourns, Susan rages, Susan disassociates. She compartmentalizes and she ignores. She flails and she flounders. She barely survives, or so she feels. She mourns everyone and everything she ever loved. Bigger brother, baby sister...mother and father. She mourns her own innocence lost. The lifetimes she'd known, the places she'd seen, the indefinable something she'd done to earn herself banishment from the one place to which she's given so much. She holds herself like a lady, the years in Narnia forged a regal posture that simply never faded and it is where she also developed a fairly formal manner of speech and authoritarian tone when she's in a mood. Nearly anyone who wants to get close these days is held at arm’s length. Friends are nothing more than tragedy and loss waiting to happen. Susan finds the title "The Gentle" ironic for it was a role she was forced into while in Narnia; these days she considers herself something far more feral than the moniker implies. Susan thinks of her sexuality her best new weapon, and not necessarily in any positive sense of the notion. It’s more of her self-preservation at work, keeping the physical and the emotional separate because she can’t cope with the connections. She can wield her good looks the way she once held a bow and makeup, pretty clothes and flirtations can give her the ability to wound people just as well as any arrow could. She compartmentalizes a lot of things these days, it makes coping (avoiding, were she capable of being honest with herself—she isn’t) with the grief bearable. Tuck each feeling and thought away into its own little crevice of her mind or heart, as the case might be, and carry on as if life was intended to be this solitary and lonely venture. Unfortunately, the one thing she’d like to do, she can’t. Narnia will not be forgotten despite her protests to the contrary. want to hear about the deal that I'm making? Why so much anger, Gentle Queen? What the canon creator has to say: "The books don't tell us what happened to Susan. She is left alive in this world at the end, having by then turned into a rather silly, conceited young woman. But there's plenty of time for her to mend and perhaps she will get to Aslan's country in the end... her own way." (From C.S. Lewis’s Letters to Children, 22 January 1957, to Martin) Neil quote from The Problem of Susan as to why this is fucked up: "That’s a blessing. I remember looking at them and thinking, What if I’m wrong, what if it’s not him after all? My younger brother was decapitated, you know. A god who would punish me for liking nylons and parties by making me walk through that school dining room, with the flies, to identify Ed, well…he’s enjoying himself a bit too much, isn’t he? Like a cat, getting the last ounce of enjoyment out of a mouse. Or a gram of enjoyment, I suppose it must be these days. I don’t know, really." And Hinky has this to share: Saint Susanna, the model on which Susan Pevensie was based, was FALSELY accused of adultery. Lewis could have done well to remember that when he wrote of Aslan 'saving' his innocents. Is it any wonder Susan rails against her God in the aftermath of being shoved out of Narnia twice and denied entrance a third time? Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, Aslan. No fury. Susan's gathered it up and wears it like a weighted crown as she tries once more to wage a war she doesn't always understand. Rage is easier to master than grief, after all. And if I only could, I'd make a deal with God Born in 1928, Susan is the second oldest of the Pevensie children. Peter being the eldest by a year and Edmund and Lucy following after. Children of some privilege, the attended boarding schools until the war (WWII) became too dangerous and the children were evacuated from London to avoid The Blitz. It was during this frightening time that the four took up residence with one Digory Kirke, a professor and owner of one very peculiar wardrobe. To spare you a summary of a long, long story (it spanned novels, after all), Susan and her siblings found their way to a frozen world of magic and wonder via this wardrobe. Narnia. There they defeated a White Witch and ended a 100-year winter, freeing the inhabitants to enjoy what became the Golden Age of the land. Centaurs, Dancing Trees, Dwarfs, Fauns...even talking Beavers and Badgers along with humans (Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve) lived across the many lands of Narnia and their kings and queens were the Pevensies, crowned by Aslan the Lion, seated in Cair Paravel near the Eastern Seas. That reign lasted fifteen years and while Susan, The Gentle and of the Horn as she was known, shied away from battle and lived a life of benevolent rule, one day on a hunting trip they found themselves returned to England. And they found themselves to once more be the children they had been before Narnia--except for in their memories. Susan often struggled with being 'trapped' in the body of a girl when she felt herself to be a woman. Her belief in Narnia faltered until nearly a year later and a very peculiar happening in a train station. Called by to Narnia by her own hunting horn and some very Deep Magic, Susan learned that time kept moving in Narnia. 1300 years forward, in fact. Cair Paravel was in ruins, Narnia ruled by cruel Telmarines and the Talking Beasts nearly extinct. The Telmarine prince, Caspian X, had summoned the kings and queens of old (the Pevensies for those not quite following) and asked their help in returning Narnia to the rightful heir. This time, The Gentle could not avoid joining in the battle and she fought the Telmarines alongside her siblings and this prince, participating in a raid and commanding her own line of archers on the battlefield. Eventually, even facing the enemy head on while using her bow and arrows in inventive ways (she bludgeoned them with her bow, stabbed then with the arrows). Throughout all of this she never questioned that they were doing the right thing, but she did doubt the Lion and his existence for unlike the first time in Narnia, Aslan seemed nowhere to be found. Victorious over the Telmarines, Caspian named the rightful king and heir to Narnia (by Aslan, who did eventually turn up), Susan thought perhaps she was to spend another quarter of a lifetime in the magic world. And maybe, just maybe with a certain prince newly crowned king for he was always watching her and she him. It would have been a suitable arrangement in her mind. Aslan had other ideas, of course. The Pevensies were to return to Earth, Susan and Peter too old for Narnia now were not to return but Edmund and Lucy would at some later date. She had waged wars for him, had ruled and protected his lands and peoples, had suffered and prevailed, found a taste of first love, lived a lifetime and more in his world only to be rejected for learning too much. Being so dismissed by the creature Susan had given so much to, she turned her back on memories of Aslan, the wardrobe and all that happened in Narnia. All but the feelings of being an adult in a not-quite-grown-up body. She laughed about what she deemed childish games and delightful hobbies of youth when her siblings would talk of Narnia, Susan refused to give the hurtful Lion more credence than that. He didn't deserve it. She didn't deserve it. Susan, the once academic cynic turned full-blown non-believer when Aslan told her she would not return to Narnia. He used her, as far as she was concerned: :: She would never believe that Aslan did anything for mercy. She didn't believe God cared enough to intervene that way, not after the things she'd witnessed and experienced. Wars in two worlds, young people still so full of life and potential destroyed and dead at far to tender an age--there was no God in that. No quarter, no mercy. It was practicality. The good of the many outweighing the needs and wants of so few. Collateral damages. She was tired of being the flotsam left adrift in the receding storm surge. This time, here and now, she was going to rebel and do as she wanted. To hell with relying on God's hand staying the hurt or some self-important feline stepping in at the last minute to pass judgment. :: She went on to do the things all young women do: she traveled abroad, studied at college and later university, went to parties and dances, flirted with boys and discovered the art of applying makeup. She lived her life to the fullest and with joy...until one afternoon of her twenty-first year. There was a ghastly train wreck, two trains colliding in the station killing many and wounding many more. Amongst the casualties were children returning for the school term after holidays and the parents there to retrieve them. Friends of friends, bosom buddies, her family. That day Susan lost her mother and father, the professor who sheltered her during the war and his companion, her cousin Eustace and his darling Jill, her older brother Peter, her younger brother Edmund, her baby sister Lucy... London and Narnia. Trains and kings and swords and witches and magic rings and stupid loyalties and death. Death. Death. Death. It was the same, everywhere: :: "I witnessed the entire thing you know. What she did, how she did it. Lucy and I, we watched as she sheered his mane and carved into his bound flesh. We wept over the lifeless carcass and were knocked to the ground when that stone table cracked. He knew what he was doing and that he would return because he knew the Deep Magic better than she. Some sacrifice. It was a plot to defeat the witch and nothing more." :: :: She offered the blasphemy as lightly as she'd discuss the weather, her mind well made up on that point. She considered it the first of many times that cat had blatantly toyed with and manipulated her emotions and she hated him for it. "We didn't defeat her. Peter fought her, absolutely. And she nearly killed him for it. I wasn't allowed to join the battle. Apparently, did you know, it's ugly war when the Daughters of Eve take up weapons. As if it's pretty when men do it." Susan saved her thoughts on being gifted bow and arrows only to be told she couldn't make use of them. There were many things she kept to herself as she skimmed through the book she said she wasn't going to read. The same for everyone but the Lion. He cheated. He came back. They made all the sacrifices and He was the one who kept coming back. And I'd get him to swap our places blah blah on verse blending between books and movies/cut scenes being considered canon It never made sense to me, and therefore to my Susan, that she was gifted with a bow and a quiver ful of arrows that would 'not easily miss' their target and then being told that she should never use them in battle because 'war is ugly when women fight'. Here, have this present you can never use, go be a girl. Susan was the High Queen, she learned how to rule a country and when that country was in danger from a tyrant and his army, I can't imagine her sitting back and letting her brothers march off war and not participate herself. I liked this spin put on the new movie by Disney. Susan got right into the middle of the fray, doing what she did best. She also took part in the castle raid (another addition based on a throw away line in the book) where she not only held her own but also served as a voice of reason. That's Susan, doing what she must but also keeping her head when others go off half-cocked. I don't see her as a warrior queen so much as I expand the maternal role Lewis assigned to her and extend it to all of Narnia as well as her siblings. She's a fierce protector of that which is in her keep. Her role in the movie was to prepare the archers as best she could and then escort her youngest sibling to safety and search for Aslan. When that plan ran aground, Susan did the sensible thing and returned to the battle field in order to join the archers needed vollies and then make that last ditch stand, shoulder to shoulder with her brothers right on the bloody battle plane. She's tough enough to stomach what needs to be done but her first recourse is still the gentler, less messy alternative. As for the 'romance' with Caspian, I see it as a nice bit of foreshadowing for what Susan was to become in Aslan's eyes. She was growing up (for the second time) and very aware of the interest someone of the opposite sex showed in her. She played on that and she enjoyed it. Then she said good-bye and learned to move on from mild flirtations and play in a world of more grown up circumstances. Neither a bad thing, neither unreasonable. Below are a few cut scenes that I include in my personal canon for Susan because they show her dry humor along with her practical stance on things. Plus, it's nice that she always seems to get one over on the guys. Training the Narnian archers (making Caspian look inept is a bonus) Saving Trumpkin in the night raid on the Telmarine castle Peter doesn't know how babby is formed Unaware, I'm tearing you asunder Susan may have left her horn of carved bone in the hands of a certain prince turned king, and she very likely hoped he'd never use it to summon her again (not that it would do any good to call for help from one who had been banished), still the thought remains that there is something within her bloodline that allows the Pevensies to be pulled from their world and into another, without their permission. It would explain how she found herself in Xanadu, perhaps. What she has kept is her know-how with a recurve bow, her aim is still frighteningly accurate for a woman who has not picked up a weapon in years. She does not easily miss (and had she her bow and quiver full of arrows from Narnia, she would never miss) and if she has someone in her sights it is for good reason. She loathes killing but will do what must be done, it's the only sensible course of action when pressed into battle: kill or be killed. That determined practicality remains and she applies it to most situations in life, albeit with far less bloody results. It saves on the laundering she must do. She is also a capable equestrian, riding both side-saddle and like an English gent on a hunt. Her wardrobe, not manners, is the only thing that dictates her choice of saddle these days. Let me steal this moment from you now Things what happen in Xanadu. You don't want to hurt me, But see how deep the bullet lies There's more to her than lipstick and nylons... ♪ The Call by Regina Spektor Now, we're back to the beginning It's just a feeling and no one knows yet But just because they can't feel it too Doesn't mean that you have to forget ♪ Can't Take It In by Imogen Heap Oh, empty my heart I've got to make room for this feeling It's so much bigger than me ♪ Swans by Unkle Bob By my side you'll never be You'll never be I wanted to tell you I changed I wanted to tell you that things would be different this time I see you, you see me differently You tell me that you love me but you never wanna see me again ♪ Cold Water by Damien Rice No one's daughter allow me that And I can't let go of your hand Lord, can you hear me now? Lord, can you hear me now? Lord, can you hear me now? or am I lost? ♪ History by Thirteen Senses You're no one I connect a little in disguise I reflect a little in your eyes ♪ This Is Home by Switchfoot I've got my memories They're always Inside of me But I can't go back Back to how it was ♪ Cold Shoulder by Adele These days when I see you You make it look like I'm see-through Do tell me why you waste our time When your heart ain't admitting you're not satisfied You know I know just how you feel I'm starting to find myself feeling that way too ♪ War on War by Wilco You have to lose You have to learn how to die if you want to want to be alive ♪ Augustine by Vienna Teng Lead me now, I understand Faith is both the prison and the open hand Bells on low on high Will you ring for Augustine tonight ♪ Mercy of the Fallen by Dar Williams If your sister or your brother were stumbling on their last mile In a self-inflicted exile Wish for them a humble friend ♪ Do What You Have To Do by Sarah McLachlan I know I can’t be with you I do what I have to do And I have sense to recognize but I don’t know how to let you go ♪ Full of Grace by SQT to Sarah McLachlan It's better this way, I say, Having seen this place before, Where everything we say and do, Hurts us all the more. It’s just that we stayed, too long, In the same old sickly skin, I’m pulled down by the undertow, I never thought I could feel so low, And oh darkness I feel like letting go. If all of the strength and all of the courage, Come and lift me from this place, I know I could love you much better than this, Full of grace. ♪ Baby Sister by Damien Rice Don't get stuck, baby sister Leave this land And read your books Baby sister, wash your hands Or he'll beat you He'll bleach your eyes So be a good girl Just for the night And run, run, run, run, run... Run, baby sister (Ave Maria...) Run, baby sister ♪ Oh, England My Lionheart by Kate Bush Oh! England, my Lionheart, I'm in your garden, fading fast in your arms. The soldiers soften, the war is over. The air raid shelters are blooming clover. Flapping umbrellas fill the lanes-- My London Bridge in rain again. ♪ Please Just Take These Photos From My Hands by Snow Patrol One gigantic fairy tale Of friends I haven't seen in years Drinking till the daylight hurts You seem friendly, who are you? That's a lot of wine that we got through We've made playtime look like work ♪ Pretty Girl by Sugarcult She's beautiful as usual with bruises on her ego and her killer instinct tells her to be aware of evil men ♪ Trainwreck by Sarah McLachlan From your mouth, it's all that I wish Mercy of your lips, just one kiss Until I can breathe again Until I can sing again Cause I'm a train wreck Waiting to happen Waiting for someone to come pick me up off the tracks ♪ Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God) by Kate Bush And if I only could, I'd make a deal with God, And I'd get him to swap our places, Be running up that road, Be running up that hill, With no problems... ♪ 2-1 ''by Imogene Heap The interim of life Has got you tiptoed and pinning all your hopes On the top dog of dreams You're not alone in this The polyfilla way looks strong in the weakness Of the gaps Is there so much hate for the ones who love? Be running up that road '''people to hold at arm's length:' Rory Stone name Be running up that hill if she had her quiver and bow, you'd be shot through: only likes Aslan less And if I only could Things what get retconned because of new movie--if any. With no problems... I own nothing of Narnia, C.S. Lewis, Neil Gaiman, Anna Popplewell or Kate Bush etc. I like pretty words and I hope to make some of my own. Hint: There are a few here. Category:Characters Category:Living